The Babysitter The Babysitter

The Babysitter

My Summers with a Serial Killer

    • 4.4 • 82 Ratings
    • $13.99

Publisher Description

This chilling true story and “harrowing account of the evil that can lurk around the edges of girlhood” (Carolyn Murnick, author of The Hot One)—reminiscent of Ann Rule’s classic The Stranger Beside Me—follows a little girl longing for love who finds friendship with her charismatic babysitter, unaware that he is a vicious serial killer.

Growing up on Cape Cod in the 1960s, Liza Rodman was a lonely little girl. During the summers, while her mother worked days in a local motel and danced most nights in the Provincetown bars, her babysitter—the kind, handsome handyman at the motel where her mother worked—took her and her sister on adventures in his truck. He bought them popsicles and together, they visited his “secret garden” in the Truro woods. To Liza, he was one of the few kind, understanding, and safe adults in her life.

But there was one thing she didn’t know; their babysitter was a serial killer.

Though Tony Costa’s gruesome case made screaming headlines in 1969 and beyond, Liza never made the connection between her friendly babysitter and the infamous killer of numerous women, including four in Massachusetts, until decades later.

Haunted by nightmares and horrified by what she learned, Liza became obsessed with the case. Now, she and cowriter Jennifer Jordan reveal “a suspenseful portrayal of murderous madness in tandem with a child’s growing loneliness, neglect, and despair, a narrative collision that will haunt” (Sarah Weinman, author of The Real Lolita) you long after you finish it.

GENRE
Nonfiction
RELEASED
2021
March 2
LANGUAGE
EN
English
LENGTH
352
Pages
PUBLISHER
Atria Books
SELLER
Simon & Schuster Digital Sales LLC
SIZE
34.1
MB

Customer Reviews

Ozcrome ,

Interesting enough.

It is definitely an overstatement to compare this book to “The Stranger Beside Me” by Rule. It is interesting but the relationship between Author and Babysitter is exaggerated.

kaykaybean13 ,

True account on Ptown MA. Insane

Loved the way the Liza interweaves her life before during and afterwards with this psychopathic homicidal maniac. When I learned of just how well she knew him and how indifferent her own mother and aunt was with who was allowed to babysit or spend days alone with her daughter is unnerving. Shocking me to my core was her comparison between her mom and Tony the serial killer yet she felt so much safer freer and was so hungry to be loved to have worth and someone who believed she mattered. It was him for her. I think that speaks volumes of the emotional abuse and the cruel antagonistic mental games she had saved only for her eldest daughter Liza and through her brokenness and her souls desire to bloom, be included mostly just shown some sincere interest and concern for her. Not having any frik her dad and was her mothers bunching bag so her awareness and confidence of knowing what socital norm behavior was like or if she’d hadn’t moved multiple times during schools seasons and during. Her mom worked extremely hard yet rewarded herself with lots of night out with her girls fending mostly for themselves and she wasn’t concerned by their needs she’s too narcissistic to show any kindness oe compassion particularly and usually only her way. Her 8 yo sis is given hugs kisses and preference. Liza is given negative criticism, blatant cruelty and is hit hurt and anxious usually scared from active images in dreams but as she grows older she suddenly has a flashback about her babysitter and she’s unable to sit around and not take some recourse to figure out the truth so she can move on

Big Daddy Mas ,

Good story

Well written, intertwining the two lives was very effective, like two stories in one.

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